You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.

It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.